This talk was recorded at the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Oceania 2015 Conference in Melbourne. You can find out more information about this conference here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/conference-schedule/

You can find links to listen to other talks from the conference here: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2015/08/14/108/

This recording is thanks to Kate from Freedom of Species: http://www.freedomofspecies.org/

Below is further information about the talk from the conference booklet, available here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-booklet-final-.pdf

Language, Rabbits, and the "Difficulty of Vegetarianism": Gendered Engagement

with Nonhuman Animal Otherness in a Japanese Film Studies Course

DYLAN O’BRIEN

Nonhuman animals find themselves in a unique situation with regards to film;

conscripted to represent narratives composed by humans, many times

counter to their own interests. Films thus uniquely other nonhuman animals,

offering humans fictional narratives to supplement their own lived experiences

and redefine their everyday interactions with them, including consuming

them. Critical animal theory has previously articulated the possibility of film

and literature, even in light of such exploitation to have possible liberatory

potential, specifically for the changing of viewpoints. This argument, largely

from a scholar-activist standpoint has largely not been connected to the work

of critical animal pedagogy, which seeks means of getting students to engage

with exploitation of nonhuman animals. In this paper, I detail the teaching of a

unit on nonhuman animal otherness in a film studies course in Japan,

presenting a merging of theory on the usage of film and literature as praxis for

liberation with critical animal pedagogy. This paper argues that there was a

gendered response correlative to other cultural contexts, and that the

predominance of discussion of diet in responses is student identification of

consumption as key to nonhuman animal otherness.

Prior discussions of critical animal pedagogy have been limited to overviews

of courses or outlining of theory, however, this paper details the specific

deployment in a two-week unit of an introductory film studies course, in order

to examine student engagement in a focused matter. In lieu of looking

exhaustively at how the concepts, film, or unit was responded to, this paper

will examine how the students responded when asked to critically analyze

nonhuman animal otherness. This paper will propose that while papers

narrowly focused, due to student choice, on consumption choices regarding

meat, this was not simple dismissal or resistance of the concept of nonhuman

animal otherness, but nuanced engagement.

Dylan Hallingstad O’Brien is a senior at Hamline University in St. Paul,

Minnesota. He is a triple major in East Asian Studies, Global Studies,

and Women’s Studies with a minor in Anthropology. Last year he was

awarded undergraduate paper of the year at the North American

Conference for Critical Animal Studies for his paper on Japanese

“humane” farming narratives. He serves on the steering committee of

Students for Critical Animal Studies. Currently, he is working on a tridepartmental

honors’ thesis on the gendering of meat in Japan.

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